Tuesday, October 24, 2006

The 80% Solution

LOS ANGELES, CA - This is the END! The end of the Santa Monica Boulevard Transit Parkway Bike Lane. Please get off your bicycle and walk to the curb. There will be no more of that “Multi-Modal” noise on the Parkway.

There is no more room. There are only six lanes through the Avenue of the Stars and they belong to the Cars. The Automobiles. The Internal-Combustion, Fossil-Fuel-Burning Single-Occupant Vehicles of Insulation, Isolation and Oblivion.

Pedestrians and Cyclists just don’t fit!

Now, get into one of the cars parked to the side of the road (one person to a car!) and pull into the traffic lane and act like a Lemming!

Good motorist. Now, please, no more of that silly Multi-Modal nonsense! We only talk Multi-Modal when we’re qualifying an URBAN HEAT ISLAND project for Federal Funding.

This is the Santa Monica Boulevard Transit Parkway approaching Beverly Hills. There is no room for a bike lane because this is where the LADOT stores unused diagonal stripes.

Even if the very important diagonal lines were stored elsewhere the bike lane would not fit because the freshly built island and the newly installed street light is in the way.

What’s behind the tree?

Oh! It’s the Beverly Hills Asphalt Museum! No wonder we couldn’t build a state-of-the-art multi-modal transportation corridor that would be compatible with a continuation project through neighboring Beverly Hills!

No right of way! No abandoned and unused wasteland! So who uses this land?